A consumer and/or merchant may rely heavily on services rendered via the Internet. One such service is searchable listings provided by a search service (also known in some instances as “yellow pages” or “Internet yellow pages,” e.g., Google.com, Amazon.com, Yahoo.com, Yelp.com, MapQuest.com, Superpages.com, etc.). Searchable listings may include businesses, such as restaurants, people information, product information, etc. The information provided may include, for example, a name of a person or business, addresses, telephone numbers (i.e., a network access point (NAP)). The information provided may also include web site URLs, photos, videos e-mail addresses, etc., as well as a special tagline to be used for promotional purposes, the latter included in a visual “tag” highlight (together, “enhanced content”). The consumer may be presented with other information about a business by either clicking anywhere in the listing, including the tagline, or placing a mouse pointer or finger over the listing, including the tagline.
Certain search service providers, such as Google.com, WhitePages.com, MapQuest.com, provide some or all of the requested information in alphabetical, “most visited”, or distance order (i.e., distance from a location that the consumer entered for a search or a distance from a location of the search provider). A merchant may wish to ensure that the NAP information provided in the search results is correct, so that a consumer may find a listing when searching in her local area, and if the consumer does choose to call or visit the merchant's business, the consumer is provided with correct information. Furthermore, a merchant may desire to maximize the chance that a consumer will select the merchant's listing from among those returned. The listing may be displayed higher in the search results and/or be featured in a more prominent and attractive fashion. The ordering of the listings is sometimes influenced by the extent to which enhanced content is available for the listing. Also, the enhanced content may be employed in the display of search results, such that the presence and quality of enhanced content associated with a listing may increase the attractiveness of the listing to the consumer. Further still, the merchant may desire to maximize the probability that a consumer that views additional information about a business will have a favorable impression of the business.
The above goals may be achieved by maximizing the presence and quality of enhanced content associated with a listing. The merchant associated with a listing may therefore desire to be listed with multiple search services. Unfortunately, the merchant currently needs to obtain their listing from each search service provider separately, i.e., they need to contact each of the search service providers separately, provide the listing information to each of the search service providers, and pay each of the search service providers separately. Moreover, if they wish to update their listing, each service provider needs to be contacted separately.
Assuming a listing is updatable at each of the search service providers, an update may take days, weeks, or more to be reflected at a consumer-facing Web site, mobile directory, application, etc., of each of the search service providers. Therefore, in the related art, updates cannot occur in real time or near real time. Moreover, the merchant cannot provide their customers with information about real-time or near real-time services, such as, for example, an offer of a discount coupon “for the next hour only.”